Attitudes of Hispanic parents toward behavior management techniques

The purpose of this study was to evaluate attitudes of parents with Hispanic surnames at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio toward various behavior management techniques used in pediatric dentistry. Thirty-two parents of pediatric patients who presented for dental treatment were selected at random in the Pediatric Dentistry Clinic of the UTHSC-SA. The research study was explained to the parent by one dentist from a standardized explanation script. Eighty-one percent of the parents had at least a high school education. The parents viewed one of two videotapes with a recorded program demonstrating eight different behavior management techniques. One tape, shown to half of the parents, had a brief explanation and rationale of the specific behavior management technique before its demonstration (Group A). The other tape, shown to the remainder of the parents, had no explanation before the demonstration of each technique (Group B). Following each segment of the tape, the parents indicated their degree of accept-ability of the technique, using a visual analogue scale. An F-test (0.05 level) and Pearson and Spearman correlation tests were used. The results showed that hand-over-mouth (HOM) was unacceptable by 63 percent of the parents in Group A and 81 percent in Group B. The papoose board (PB) technique was unacceptable in 81 percent in Group A and 63 percent in group B. In both groups, parents would prefer to have had the child given general anesthesia rather than HOM.